International Gender and Trade Network at Hong Kong

Details: Created: 19 December 2006

Representatives from each of the eight regions of the International Gender and Trade Network developed these policy positions in preparation for the WTO Sixth Ministerial. The positions specifically address the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and Food Sovereignty; Non-Agricultural Market Access and Autonomous Industrialization; General Agreement on Trade in Services and Social Reproduction; Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Knowledge Reproduction; Special and Differential Treatment and Trade-Related Technical Assistance. In order to hammer out a fairer system of global trade for both men and women, IGTN has drawn out the following analyses and advocacy positions on the most critical issues in Hong Kong for human rights, employments, livelihoods and entitlements:

Agreement on Agriculture
- Ensuring food sovereignty for all peoples and nations should be at the heart of any rural development and trade policy.
- The WTO disciplines on agricultural trade liberalisation have sacrificed food sovereignty in favor of profit-driven transnational agribusiness. For this reason, agriculture must be taken out of the WTO.

Non Agricultural Market Access
- Stop de-industrialisation through tariff harmonisation and/or tariff elimination. - Strengthen domestic regulation and non-tariff measures that fulfill national social objectives.

Services
- Services essential to social reproduction should be excluded a priori from GATS. - There should be a moratorium on further GATS negotiations until a development, gender and social impact assessment of current GATS commitments is completed. - Mode 4 should not be a bargaining chip

Intellectual Property
- TRIPS should be removed from the WTO. - The implementation of paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health issues should aim to ensure that compulsory licensing mechanisms become effective, transparent and easy to use by all developing countries. - Compulsory licensing mechanism should not be limited to particular diseases. It should respond to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in each developing country.

Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) and Trade-Related Technical Assistance (TRTA)
- Expand SDT and TRTA so that flexibilities enable developing countries to implement national development plans. For the full copy of the IGTN at Hong Kong advocacy document, visit: www.igtn.org/page/641

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